Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a type of enterprise software commonly used for managing a company's interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. CRM software allows users to enter information related to activities (or tasks) into a database, so that they can be tracked and managed. These activities may include various sales, marketing, customer service and/or technical support activities, such as opportunity management. To find and induce new and existing customers to buy its products and services, for example, a company may use analytics provided by a CRM software to discover consumer trends from business data (e.g., survey, demographic data) and guide decisions for consumer segmentation, targeting, testing, campaigning and measuring.
Each of these activities can be complex, time consuming and expensive. More than one person is usually required to perform the actual work to complete these activities. To facilitate collaboration, unstructured or uncontrolled communications means, such as conference calls, emails, face-to-face meetings, short messages (e.g., replies on one topic), etc., are often employed to share information and discuss issues. However, it may be difficult to accurately manage and track the progress of each activity in the CRM software.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved collaboration environment that addresses the above-mentioned challenges.